


Life Drawing

by Zoadgo



Series: Merry Ficmas! [7]
Category: Z Nation (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Art Student Addy, F/F, Model Cassandra
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 18:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5508224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoadgo/pseuds/Zoadgo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Addy does not want to stick to classic ideas of what “art” is, so when she’s sees Life Drawing on her schedule, she’s certain that she’s going to hate every second of it. That is, until she meets the model for it, and hey, maybe this won’t be so bad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life Drawing

There are some days that Addy deeply regrets having decided on attending college for art, her interest in her courses largely dependant on the teachers and the subject matter involved. When she’s allowed to sketch her circuits and androids with genuinely constructive criticism from her instructors, Addy loves the school and what she learns there. When certain teachers decide that her technological mashup art isn’t “right” and just insist on telling her she’s wrong, Addy finds herself praying for an apocalypse that would get her out of there.

Addy studies her timetable for the new semester and briefly debates crushing it out of annoyance before carefully tucking it in between a sketchpad and a notebook in her shoulderbag. _Life Drawing_. Three hours a week drawing naked people in various poses, a necessary prerequisite to a lot of courses Addy wants to take, and one she dreads in its own right. On top of the lack of opportunity for Addy to use the skills that drove her to pursue art, it’s to be taught by Reina, one of the teachers most feared for her strict assignments and desire for technicality over creativity.

Yup, it looks like Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays are going to be the days that Addy hates her life. And given that today is Monday and the universe has truly conspired against her chances for happiness, Addy shrugs the strap of her bag higher on her shoulder and heads off to the studio of her nightmares. 

The twisting halls between the administration offices where students pick up their schedules and the various studios with all the equipment and mentoring a hopeful artist could need held within them are already showing signs of occupation, despite the school only having been open from it’s two week long break for a few hours. There are a couple of students, young and weaving about the halls quickly, glancing between papers in their hands and the numbers on the doors of the classrooms, who are obviously new. Addy passes them and exchanges quick nods with familiar faces, slouched next to locked doors and nursing oversized cups of coffee.

Addy barely has to pay attention to the path she takes, more than familiar with the halls in which she’s spent countless late nights and early mornings. It’s a leisurely stroll to the life drawing studio, and Addy tries the doorknob when she arrives, not expecting it to open given how early she is. It twists fully in her grasp, however, and Addy simply utters a small ‘huh’ and enters the room with a shrug.

The room is empty of people, which doesn’t surprise Addy as the class doesn’t start for another hour, so she tries to get a seat that will hopefully give her a decent chance at not having to capture too many awkward angles of the model. Some artists, her teacher included quite likely, would argue she should challenge herself to try and expand her skills. Although Addy enjoys a challenge, she doesn’t enjoy failing overly much, so she tries to stick to doing things she’s good at. And drawing humans with no elements of fantasy, horror, or sci-fi to their structure is simply not one of her strengths.

Addy sets her bag down next to one of the seats and slouches into it with a sigh, relaxing for a moment and allowing the tension of the hour long, cramped bus ride she has to take to get to school to drain from her. She shifts her head slowly on her neck, stretching out the tension and simply enjoying the silence before what is doubtless to be a shitstorm of a class. In order to take more interesting courses, Addy needs to pass this course, and there’s no question that she’ll pass, but there’s also very little doubt that she’ll hate every second of it between now and finals.

When the muscles in Addy’s legs finally relax after having been standing and walking since she woke up at an ungodly hour of the morning, she begins to almost doze off in her seat, so Addy shifts forward with a small groan and fishes her small carafe of coffee from her bag. Caffeine, the lifeblood of every student, and as far as Addy knows, every artist, too. She takes a sip of the bitter, scalding liquid, the once offensive taste now satisfying a craving within her, letting out a small sigh as the coffee warms her up and begins to soothe the small headache she hadn’t even really noticed forming.

Addy hears the door behind her open quickly and she turns to look as a gorgeous young woman, panting slightly and clearly rushing, darts into the room, focusing primarily on pulling off an absurdly thick scarf and gloves.

“I know I’m late, sorry, there was a traffic jam and-” The woman finally looks up as she wrestles off her gloves and notices that Addy’s the only one in the room, “Oh! Uh, is Reina around? The teacher?”

“Haven’t seen her,” Addy says with a shrug and a small, apologetic smile for the woman, “I’m Addy, by the way.”

“Cassandra.” The girl sighs and runs a hand through her dark hair briefly, freeing it from the back of her coat before removing that garment and revealing another sweater underneath. Addy raises an eyebrow at her.

“You know that it’s spring, right? Not the middle of winter in Siberia?” Addy teases, smiling as Cassandra looks down at her multiple layers as if just now realizing what she’s wearing. Her cheeks darken slightly, which Addy would have blamed on the cold had it actually been cold and not just mildly chilly and dreary out.

“I get cold easily.” Cassandra clears her throat slightly and shrugs off her sweater, finally revealing toned arms rather than more long sleeves, marked over with the occasional small scar standing out on her dark skin. “Just wait until summer, you’ll be complaining about the heat and I’ll be thriving.”

Cassandra smiles at her as she walks past Addy, headed towards a curtain that Addy assumes leads to a back room for storage, and Addy studies her as she moves. There’s a strength and surety to her movements, and now that she’s only wearing skinny jeans and a tight tank top, Addy can clearly see that she’s well toned, muscles hinting in her arms as she pulls the curtain aside suggesting she’s actually athletic, rather than just being skinny. She disappears for a moment behind the curtain, and then returns devoid of her outerwear, and Addy’s rubs her fingers together with the familiar urge to draw.

It surprises Addy slightly, that she actually wants to draw Cassandra, but she learned long ago not to question where her inspiration comes from. Cassandra sits of the edges of the raised platform the model will use, facing Addy, and Addy bends down to retrieve a sketchbook and soft pencil from her bag. She doesn’t usually use them, preferring harder leads to capture the stern lines of electronics that she weaves into everything she creates, but Addy feels that smoother lines would complement Cassandra’s underlying power well. Normally Addy wouldn’t sketch a person she’d just met a few moments ago, but Cassandra’s another student, if anyone would understand an artist's urges, it’s her.

Addy’s fingers have just closed on the right pencil when she hears the door open again, and she straightens with her prize to look at the new arrival.

“Oh, Reina!” Cassandra stands quickly and walks over to the imposing woman who strides into the room.

Reina, the most feared teacher at Addy’s school who Addy has been lucky enough to only see in passing, is just as intimidating after a two week vacation. She holds herself with the bearing of a queen, and if rumour has it right, she picked her own name for that very reason, legally changing it. Of course, it could be a coincidence, but students love conspiracies about their teacher, and Reina has never confirmed nor denied it.

“You’re late.” Reina narrows her eyes at Cassandra, who simply shrugs, and then turns her attention to Addy, a small smile quirking the edge of her lips, “And you are early.”

“City busses, you never know when they’re going to run on time or not,” Addy explains with a shrug, omitting the fact that she’s always early because she comes straight to school after graveyard shifts. Reina doesn’t seem like the sort of person who cares about hearing others’ sob stories.

A small hum and a measuring look is Reina’s only response to Addy, before she turns her attention back to Cassandra, beckoning her with a gesture and striding off. Cassandra follows her quickly and smoothly, asking questions about Reina’s break as they disappear behind the curtain.

Addy sets down her sketchpad with a sigh, regretting having missed the moment to draw Cassandra. She’s almost tempted to work from memory, but she doesn’t have enough to draw on there. Now, if Cassandra were a radio, Addy could sketch her in her sleep. But as the situation stands, Addy will simply have to patient and hope she can steal a few minutes with Cassandra at some point. Maybe she should ask her out to coffee, that’s an offer that very few students pass up.

Minutes tick by and Addy’s supply of caffeine depletes, Reina and Cassandra apparently intent on spending all the time before class in whatever backroom they’re in, so Addy fishes one of her simple mechanical pencils from her bag and flips open to a blank page. Schematics and robotic creatures slip past as she seeks a sheet of plain white, and when Addy finds one near the back of her book, she poses her hand above it and waits for inspiration to comes to her, as it always does.

With her left hand, not disturbing the position of her right that indicates to her mind she’s about to draw, Addy picks up her coffee and takes another swig. She glances around the room as her hand fails to indicate to her what she ought to draw, searching for inspiration in anything around her. The tip of her lead touches the page hopefully, and Addy frowns at the paper, the ticking of the clock a constant in the background that becomes annoying.

And that touch of annoyance gives her a spark, just one line to start her off. Addy dismantles the clock in artwork, gears and circuits falling apart and being reassembled according to her design. Gears hang on wires, like snowflakes caught in hair, and Addy’s hand spins the image out along guidelines apparent only to her. Clock hands twist into a confident jaw, numbers catching on features and weaving into a thick scarf.

By the time Addy is done her small sketch, a simplistic representation of her thoughts, other students have arrived, and Reina and Cassandra are still in the back. A mechanical face smiles up at Addy from her notebook, and she smiles back at it for a moment before closing it and turning to greet her classmates, familiar from previous courses and welcome sights after the break.

The time until the start of class passes in hopefully commentary on the coming months, with Addy and a few others shooting down the hopefuls and reminding them of finals last semester, at which everyone grimaces. Still, everyone is full of smiles and excited stories of their break, even Addy who had worked, but managed to find some time to take her brother to a local fair. The break had been kind to all of them, and now they’re back at school and hopefully rested enough to survive another semester of harsh critiques and early deadlines.

“Class,” Reina’s voice cuts through the chatter at exactly the moment the hand of the clock line up to 8:00. She strides from the backroom and everyone falls silent in a heartbeat, her reputation arguably more intimidating than her person, but only barely. “You know the class you are in, and hopefully you are aware of what it entails. You are not fresh new children, full of foolish expectations and requiring care and guidance, and I shall not treat you as such. There is no syllabus for my class. I will assign a task, you will complete it, and I will tell you what you did well and what you did poorly. Show up on time or early, and follow my instructions, and there will be no issues. Yes?”

She raises a sharp eyebrow in expectation at the class, who echo a ragged affirmative to her. She nods at that, and Addy reminds herself not to be intimidated. All she has to do is pass, and what’s the worst that can happen? She’ll fail and retake the course with another instructor. It’ll stretch her finances, but she’s managed worse. Addy nods to herself and quickly scans the assembled students to find Cassandra, having been caught up in her own group of friends and not noticed when she must have joined the class. She doesn’t see the girl anywhere, and confusion sets in on her briefly as Reina ducks behind the curtain again for a moment.

Then everything becomes clear as Reina emerges with Cassandra, wearing a soft lavender robe, leading the younger woman up onto the platform. Addy stares at her, and Cassandra’s gaze seeks her out, shooting her a small wink before looking up at an indeterminate point on the wall above the students’ heads.

“Cassandra will work with us a lot, she is an experienced model. For the first assignment of the day, she will be doing five minute poses. Capture each one as you see fit.” Reina smiles after that, and it is not a kind smile as she casts a sharp gaze over every student gathered, “I fully expect all of you to fail this, consider it a learning experience. You will not always know the expectations set out for you until you’ve failed to meet them.”

With that, Reina steps aside, striding to the back of the classroom, and Cassandra drops her robe, placing it carefully at the side of the stage before walking back to the middle and taking her first pose. Addy almost forgets to picks up her pencil as Cassandra arcs her back, twisting her limbs into an incredibly interesting pose that looks entirely uncomfortable to hold. The sound of pencils confidently tracing over pages draws Addy’s attention to her own work and away from the line of Cassandra’s spine, the soft curve of her stomach accentuated by sharp hipbones, the small swell of her breasts. 

Addy shakes her head and pulls out the soft pencil she had intended to use to trace Cassandra's features in the first place. She glances up at Cassandra, trying to see past her detail to the general form of her pose, as they’re likely supposed to. But, like with her circuits and machines, Addy attention lands solely on the details, the thing that make her whole form and make Cassandra different from anyone else. Addy’s pencil marks down scars, sharp joints, hinting at her whole form but detailing her differences the most.

Five minutes is called, and Cassandra switches poses quickly, turning to face a different part of the room. Addy marks down the new details revealed to her, a bruise on the back of Cassandra’s left hip. She finds herself wanting to paint it, build out the colours over Cassandra’s skin, but she forces her mind back to the task at hand.

The rest of the classes passes in failure after failure for all of the students, Addy included, but Addy doesn’t find herself hating it as she thought she would. Although Reina’s tasks are presented in the most general way and her expectations are evidently extremely precise, Addy finds herself wanting to do better rather than getting annoyed over the fact that she’s not already great. She knows she’s not doing Cassandra justice with her lines, and she needs to, she needs to be better, to capture more of the essence that is Cassandra in the faint grey lines arcing over her pages.

“You will all do better tomorrow,” is all Reina says as she dismisses them after an hour, not an assurance, but rather a command. The students are mostly silent, nodding or frowning as they see fit as the gather their supplies and head out the door to their next class. Addy knows she has to get a move on if she wants to make it to the other side of campus in the next four minutes, but she delays for a moment as Cassandra shrugs on her robe again.

“Hey,” Addy starts, awkwardly, mentally hitting herself for how weird it is to just say ‘hey’ to someone you’ve just sketched naked for an hour.

“Hi,” Cassandra responds with a small, teasing smile, and Addy takes heart from the fact that she seems to be amused by Addy approaching her after the class is out, rather than creeped out by it. She sits on the edge of the stage in front of Addy again, crossing her legs and leaning back, twisting her spine slightly to stretch it out with audible cracks.

“I’m surprised you didn’t pose with a scarf on.” 

Cassandra laughs at that, and Addy smiles, enjoying the sound of her laugh. Cassandra shrugs and smiles, pointing her toes and stretching her legs out with a small, satisfied sigh after she relaxes the limbs.

“I would if I could, but I think Reina would kill me.” Cassandra stands after stretching all of her limbs, but she doesn’t walk away from Addy, and now Addy really has to leave because she has just over one minute to make what should be a five minute journey. But it definitely had been worth it to watch Cassandra stretch like that.

“I’d draw you like that,” Addy blurts out, and Cassandra’s brow furrows in confusion, but she’s still smiling, so Addy corrects herself, “I mean, if you’d like sometime. I’m not very good at drawing people, and I’d pay you in coffee, you could keep your clothes on and everything.”

“Are you asking me on a coffee date?” Cassandra seems to be challenging Addy with her confident pose, daring her to stumble over her words again, and Addy straightens her spine, shouldering her bag higher.

“Yup, you down?” Okay, so she’s more nervous than she lets on, but false bravado sells sometimes. And even though she would be more than happy with simply sketching Cassandra over a cup of coffee, she’s not going to deny wanting it to potentially be more than practice for class.

“Sure, I’m down. You always come to school as early as you did today?” Addy nods and Cassandra continues, “Good, meet me at BeanZ at 7?”

“7, got it.” Addy glances up at the clock, now proudly proclaiming 9:06, and swears before running out of the classroom to the sound of Cassandra chuckling slightly. She doesn’t know anything about Cassandra, not really, but Addy’s looking forward to learning from her. Learning how to trace the curves of a body onto paper, and perhaps learning about the girl she’s drawing.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy holidays, everyone! Welcome to the third day of Ficmas! 
> 
> I had to do a happy modern AU for Cassandra and Addy, ‘cause they both need a little bit of happy! Also, disclaimer and such that I never actually did art school, I only attended one for Culinary Studies, so idk what the art classes are actually like.
> 
> Forever giving all the love to my editor [Etra](http://coldsaturn.tumblr.com), she’s the most amazing person!
> 
> Come spend the holidays with me [on tumblr!](http://jonnmurphy.tumblr.com) And thank in advance for reading/commenting/leaving kudos <3


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